Welcome to Literapedia!

Literapedia is a web experiment being conducted by an English literature teacher and his students. Since March of 2007 this site has provided interpretation-free book notes on great works of literature. Since these book notes do not seek to analyze the texts, they will be useful only to students who actually have read or are reading the texts--not to students seeking a shortcut.

Rationale

For a number of years, I have created for my students book notes on the books we are reading in class. These are provided in lieu of commercial literature guides, which I ask my students not to use.

I don't like for my students to read Cliff Notes, Spark Notes, and their ilk, because they typically provide an interpretation of the works. I would much prefer that my students devise their own interpretations.

For this reason, the book notes I provide are as devoid of interpretation as I can make them. They typically contain short plot synopses by chapter and a character list with short descriptions. The book notes are designed to be useful to students reading the text, writng a paper, discussing the text, and/or reviewing for a test.

With the advent of Wikis, it became apparent to me that I could share the responsibility for creating these notes with my students, and that creating the notes could become a learning process in itself.